Sorry for the misunderstanding. I got from your original mail that "looking down on people who wear WM shoes => lefty elitism" was a distinction between leftists and them, pseudo-leftists as I'd put it. Hence my reply.
> Dewd! Did you read the article. The point wasn't to offer you an
> option. The point was to encourage massive social change in
> consumption habits in order to change capitalism! Not to elimate
> capitalism, but to change it!
I got that.
> Buy their shoes. I doesn't give a rats ass, but don't tell me that
> they're unproblematic in the way they pursue social change.
I did not get the feeling that anybody quoted in the article was pursuing social change. They pursue an image of themselves, but certainly not social change.
I checked the shoe maker's HP and read the stuff they had about the factory in Portugal, because that's what I was interested in in the first place when I read the paper. And what I read was something that may sound revolutionary for people who are used to the Nike sweatshops, but that is common place pretty much anywhere one goes in Europe.
So basically, no, I was not overly impressed, _especially_ by their "anticapitalist" pseudo-stance. But I still consider that if a shoe brand makes European workers work by European "standards" (well, Portugese European standards, the lowest in Europe...) it is better that a brand that makes Chinese workers work in sweatshops. And I am not talking about WM here. If WM works with factories that pay living wages, allow union work etc, I am all for it.
And I agree that there is nothing revolutionary here.
Jean-Christophe